Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1507870
44 INNOVATION The next billion-dollar healthcare startups, per Forbes By Giles Bruce O f the 50,000 venture capital-backed startups in the U.S., Forbes predicts that four specializing in healthcare will one day be valued at $1 billion or more. The news outlet picked the future "unicorns" with TrueBridge Capital Partners from more than 200 nominations. Here are Forbes' future billion-dollar healthcare startups, according to the Aug. 15 story: 1. Chapter. The startup, which has raised $61 million, searches a huge database of Medicare plans to match seniors with the best option. Its CEO, Cobi Blumenfeld- Gantz, is a veteran of data company Palantir, which works with health systems such as Cleveland Clinic. 2. Medallion. The company, which has brought in $85 million to date, automates administrative tasks such as medical licensure verification and enrolling physicians in payer networks. It has such customers as Oak Street Health and VillageMD and funders including GV, the venture capital arm of Google parent company Alphabet. 3. Pendulum Therapeutics. Colleen Cutcliffe, PhD, founded the company after her daughter, who was born premature, developed food sensitivities and metabolic issues possibly tied to all the antibiotics she took early in life. The startup, which has landed $116 million (including $300,000 in seed funding from Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic), has developed a probiotic for treating Type 2 diabetes as well as other gut health products. Dr. Cutliffe was once a project manager for Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. Pendulum's chief communications officer is actress Halle Berry, who is also an angel investor. 4. Verifiable. The company, which has brought in $47 million in funding, digitally verifies medical professionals' credentials for hospitals and health systems, saying it has sped up the process by more than 70 percent for some customers. Its clients include more than 400,000 healthcare providers. One of its lead investors is Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. n of healthcare. Similarly we're valuable to the institutional investors that even those who focus all of their investment strategy and thesis around healthcare, if they're thinking about investments that relate to,the operations or the care delivery within a provider system. ey are still a step removed from where we are, so being able to leverage us and rely on us for that kind of expertise puts us in a really good position. We have got thousands of subject matter experts at our disposal as we are trying to do the due diligence and understand what kind of investments to make. at really plays to our advantage. Q: Tampa General InnoVentures doesn't lead rounds. How does that change your strategy? RF: at's why those relationships with those institutional lead investors are so important to us. We certainly do all of our diligence: We think we add to their diligence and certainly they add to ours, and in terms of helping drive the flow to us. We can be additive to the investment round as a strategic partner. Oentimes, we are an investor, but we're also a customer or a strategic partner with a company that we invest in. at adds a lot of value to the company as well as to the investors. Q: How do you evaluate the healthcare AI market? RF: AI continues to evolve in terms of what we mean when we say AI. Of course, we've been working for a long time on algorithmic AI. Obviously, the buzz is all around AI and GPT and those kinds of technologies, which I think it's still a little bit early to understand. We're an Epic system. We're very closely watching the work that they're doing with Microso, and there's so much to see in that space. You just have to be cautious in investing and not be at the top of the hype cycle of any one technology. We're certainly partnering and doing a lot there, and I would say our focus is on investing not just in a point AI solution, but something where the company is leveraging AI as part of its solution or platform that's solving a real significant problem in healthcare. e key is making sure that you're not investing in just the technology, but you're investing in the technology that's driving toward a meaningful solution. Anytime the hype is really high over any one time, you can get into a situation where there's money chasing technology — that's not necessarily a meaningful solution. So that's something we're watching very closely. But there's no doubt that AI of all flavors and shapes and sizes is going to drastically change the way healthcare is delivered. Q: What projects are you currently working on? RF: ere are a lot of exciting things that we're working on around AI. We are definitely focused on areas of opportunity to explore, how AI can continue to help us automate things within the health system. We talk a lot about workforce challenges and shortages in healthcare. It's not about displacing people. It's really about dealing with not having people. at's a really strong focus for us in terms of how we're looking at and leveraging AI in the revenue cycle in the inpatient operations space. We're also really focused on expanding our 'rooms of the future' on the inpatient side. I'm looking at ways where we can leverage virtual care in the inpatient setting. I think one of the things that you saw a lot in COVID-19 started at the beginning of our conversation was this focus on telehealth or virtual care. Now you're starting to see that hybrid model. We all live in this hybrid world. How many meetings do we go to where some people are in person and some people are on Zoom or Teams? In the inpatient hospital setting, that's that you're starting to see that as well. n